


Keen Marks

by ide_cyan



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Cutting, ExoWriMo, Flash Fiction, Gen, Religious Content, Self-Harm, Tattoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 23:49:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13581537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ide_cyan/pseuds/ide_cyan
Summary: "I glory in my sufferings." — Marcus Keane, episode 2x01, "Janus" (riffing on Romans 5:3)"Take your broken heart, make it into art." — Carrie Fisher





	Keen Marks

The things you pick up doing good works. Tattooing, for instance. Father Marcus Keane had seen it done in prisons and in the bush, and learned it didn't take much more than a needle and pigment. He had gathered the necessities without consciously admitting to himself why he sought them, compelled by the resurgence of an old, dormant need inside of him.

And when he couldn't sleep at night, thinking about Mouse, he'd put these basic things together, and pricked the back of his hand, jabbed the needle into his skin because it hurt, and the more it hurt, the better he felt. The ink, that was the excuse. To draw two concentric circles, the tip of a gun barrel, puncture by puncture, where he would see them always, and be reminded of all of the damage that he could do, the lives that he could destroy, if he took the left-hand path and strayed from righteousness.

When he was done and the tattoo had begun to scab over, it was, he realised, the same relief he'd felt as a child, carving the artwork on his upper arm with a razor, that he had found in every needle poke: the flagellant's release, through the mortification of the flesh.

The next time he felt that need, he picked up a stick of charcoal, and made a conscious, painful choice to channel the impulse into another form of self-expression. 

He started to draw.


End file.
